How do you sum up the breadth and impact of four decades of research? We highlight 40 key accomplishments that have changed the policy landscape.
1. Comprehensive Evaluation of Social Programs
Examined how four cabinet-level agencies—Labor; Housing and Urban Development; Health, Education, and Welfare; and the Office of Equal Opportunity—evaluated 15 of their social programs. Our recommendations led the agencies to adopt their first comprehensive evaluation system.
2. Public Interest Research
Investigated factual questions in administrative and court cases through our Public Interest Research Project, giving judges the facts they need to decide on issues from voting rights to fair employment practices.
3. The costs and effects of reforms: Transfer Income Model (TRIM )
Built the Transfer Income Model (TRIM) to gauge how households will fare under proposed changes in federal programs and tax rules. TRIM, now in its third generation, helps policymakers understand the costs and effects of reforms for welfare, taxes, and health care.
4. Objective Rankings for Cities
Ranked 18 large metropolitan areas by measures of poverty, unemployment, racial equality, health, education, traffic safety, housing, and other social conditions, giving policymakers an objective yardstick for comparing cities to each other or charting a single city's progress or decline.
5. Performance Management in Government
Pioneered performance-management techniques that government agencies still use to evaluate and improve public services—from economic development to garbage collection.
6. Costs and Benefits of Labor Subsidies
Developed labor-market models to study the costs and benefits of labor subsidies, state by state or nationwide. The models, frequently updated, allow us to estimate how changes in demand affect unemployment and the job market.
7. Modelling Welfare Reform
Upgraded TRIM, which the White House and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare then used to shape, test, and evaluate President Nixon's Family Assistance Plan and other welfare reform proposals.
8. Urban Housing and Federal Programs
Modeled supply and demand in urban housing markets and analyzed federal programs' effects on the size, condition, and price of urban housing, enabling the Department of Housing and Urban Development to estimate housing subsidy costs by household type for the first time.
9. Grant Substitution
Introduced the key idea of grant substitution—widely debated for the next decade—after finding that states were spending federal Social Security Title XX funds on programs once funded by states.
10. Effectiveness of City Services
Assessed, after New York City's financial crisis, the cost-effectiveness of city services delivery, compensation for municipal workers, and the hidden deficits of infrastructure decay and pension obligations.
11. Community Development Corporations Performance
Developed the first criteria for judging the performance of community development corporations (CDCs) in the poor minority neighborhoods they were designed to serve. We found that CDCs provided programs that the unaided private market and urban governments couldn't at the time.
12. Dynamic Simulation of Income Model (DYNASIM)
Used our Dynamic Simulation of Income Model (DYNASIM) to show how changing demographics and economics can affect government programs and family incomes over time. TRIM and DYNASIM became hallmarks of Urban Institute and our use of factual analysis to evaluate policy.
13. Federal Aid to Cities and States
Documented for the first time the many federal aid programs for cities and states, paving the way for "block grants" to states.
14. Retirement Income for Women
Studied the retirement income for women under the Social Security system. We then worked with women's pension groups to assess proposals for increasing coverage for women.
15. Massive Immigration in Southern California
Studied the problems and opportunities posed by massive immigration in Southern California, showing immigration's effects on employment, wage levels, the labor force's skill mix, and demand for bilingual education.
16. Changing Domestic Priorities: Reagan Years
Launched our most ambitious project to date, examining the broad policy shifts of the Reagan administration in our Changing Domestic Priorities (CDP) initiative. Over 10 years, CDP published 33 briefs and books, beginning with the widely cited The Reagan Experiment. read more
17. Urban Capital Management Guides for Cities
Created practical urban capital management guides for managers of city and state public works, planning, and finance departments. As an urban infrastructure crisis loomed, the Institute formed a network of cities that simultaneously launched reforms to stay economically competitive.
18. Working Americans and Health Insurance
Reported that 37 million Americans lacked health insurance in 1986, up from 28.6 million in 1980. Our research-the first of its kind-showed that, contrary to popular belief, most uninsured adults had jobs.
19. National Count of Homelessness
Conducted the first credible national count of homelessness, showing that both the numbers of homeless and, thus, the intractability of the problem had been exaggerated.
20. Welfare Caseload Growth
Demolished the policy myth that growth in the number of needy Americans was fueling the rapid increase in welfare caseloads during the 1960s and found a higher percentage of eligible families applying for aid. This work helped save unnecessary policy steps to restrict program growth.
21. Discrimination against African-American jobseekers
Used "paired testing" research techniques to show that hiring discrimination against African-American jobseekers was not a thing of the past. Our audit found that white applicants with the same credentials as their black counterparts advanced further 20 percent of the time.
22. Solving Inner-City Problems
Offered, in the wake of the 1992 urban riots, mayors and other urban policymakers a timely overview of what experts know about solving inner-city problems.
23. Housing in the Russian Federation
Provided, with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), technical assistance on housing to the Russian Federation. One USAID official, quoted at the time by the General Accounting Office, reported that "for the money, no USAID project has had more macroeconomic impact."
24. Immigrants' Economic Contributions
Set straight the common misperception that immigrants were getting far more out of government services than they paid in taxes by assessing the full range of immigrants' economic contributions.
25. Baby Boomers Saving for Retirement
Helped expose the need for baby boomers to save more for retirement if they hoped to match their parents' standard of living and explored possible incentives for changing how Americans plan for retirement.
26. U.S. Government Performance and Accountability Act
Advised Congressional Senate and House staff on the U.S. Government Performance and Accountability Act legislation, which was signed into law and is still driving the federal government's performance-monitoring efforts.
27. Federal Justice Statistics Center
Assumed responsibility for the Federal Justice Statistics Center for the U.S. Department of Justice. Our new Justice Policy Center began generating reports on the federal criminal justice system and providing rapid-response analyses requested by Congress.
28. Institute for Urban Economics in Moscow
Seeding, in what may turn out to be our most important legacy in Russia, a nongovernmental, nonprofit think tank-the Institute for Urban Economics in Moscow-that has become a national leader in solving housing, real estate finance, and municipal service problems.
29. National Neighborhood Indicators
Developed the National Neighborhood Indicators Project to help policymakers plan, measure, and monitor communities' progress. Local stakeholders, ranging from civic leaders to neighborhood groups, use the data to inform their work helping distressed urban neighborhoods.
Began our 10-year Assessing the New Federalism project, which monitored and analyzed what happened to America's poor after "work first" programs replaced cash assistance and states took on more responsibility for health, employment, and social service programs for low-income families. read more
31. Prisoner Reentry
Launched our prisoner reentry initiative—"Returning Home"—to track what happens to the roughly 1,600 men and women released from prison each day. Today, we are helping more than a dozen states slow the revolving door back to prison and prepare inmates for productive lives on the outside.
32. National Nonprofit Data System and National Center for Charitable Statistics
Documented the size, scope, and financial health of the nonprofit sector, assembling our research into the National Nonprofit Data System-the largest and most comprehensive resource on nonprofits. To produce higher quality data, our National Center for Charitable Statistics pioneered electronic filing of IRS Forms 990.
33. Tax Policy Center
Launched the Tax Policy Center in partnership with the Brookings Institution. Our state-of-the-art microsimulation tax model enabled our experts to estimate the effects of various tax policies and proposals and helped make TPC a source for facts and objective analysis on pressing tax issues.
34. federal HOPE VI housing relocation program
Tracked, for seven years, relocated residents of housing developments slated for demolition and revitalization under the federal HOPE VI program. We found that many former residents had moved to safer neighborhoods, though a substantial minority remained stuck in distressed public housing developments and in need of better program services.
35. Retirement policy and Social Security Reform
Built a large body of work on retirement policy to inform and ground a sometimes emotional debate with technical analyses of Social Security and Medicare reform, the adequacy of baby boomers' retirement savings, and the ways automatic spending growth in entitlement programs squeezes out other national priorities.
36. Rebuilding After Katrina
Delivered vital information to policymakers on how to rebuild New Orleans after it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Institute experts assessed the damage and offered solutions on health care, education, housing, employment, cultural vitality, social programs, and charitable responses.
37. National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER)
Founded the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) to comb through emerging state longitudinal databases generated as accountability pressures rise. CALDER seeks to determine how school policies affect student achievement.
38. Disconnected Young Men
Drew attention to the problems of disconnected young men-particularly young black men who have the poorest life chances of any other group-in two widely cited books, Black Males Left Behind and Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men..
39. Massachusetts' universal health care coverage experiment
Contributed to Massachusetts' 2006 universal health care coverage experiment with our proposals on health insurance reform. A year later, we found that the share of uninsured adults in the state fell by nearly half and employers didn't appear to be eliminating their health benefits because public coverage was available.
40. Subprime Mortgage Market Meltdown
Warned policymakers about the possibility and consequences of a subprime mortgage market meltdown. Several recommendations in Ned Gramlich's Subprime Mortgages: America's Latest Boom and Bust were adopted by the Federal Reserve Board to tighten mortgage-lending standards.
